


Frustrating

by SeveralSmallHedgehogs



Category: Life of the Party D&D (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Scars, Vanden does not like people touching him, god what do i tag this, the fluff is brief, theirs is not a super healthy relationship here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:20:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23644504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeveralSmallHedgehogs/pseuds/SeveralSmallHedgehogs
Summary: Vanden and Cassian lie in the same bed and separately think about their relationship.
Relationships: Cassian/Renard (Life of the Party), cassian - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	Frustrating

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna treat this like an artist's sketch. Not a finished work, but it's something and I like it.
> 
> I've been experiencing writer's block, and I wanted to post something, and Vanden and Cassian are just... fascinating to me.

Vanden remained on his side, trying to let his breathing and heartbeat return to normal while Cassian was gone. He was sure his face was still flushed bright red. Some time ago, Cassian had told him he had a pretty face. A little more recently, Cassian had whispered it again right in his ear, along with a few other... specific praises.

His face flamed again at the memory. He took a deep breath and tried to push aside the embarrassment. There was no shame in looking good. There was no shame in liking that Cassian thought he looked good. There was no shame in liking when Cassian told him he looked good.

It wasn’t working. He buried his face in his pillow and groaned.

A minute later, footsteps and the faint creaking of floorboards told him that Cassian was back. There was a pause, he heard a shuffle and figured Cassian was leaning over to try and get a better look at him. “Vanden?” he asked, his voice quiet but clear. “Are you awake?”

“Mhm.” Vanden turned his face out of the pillow and let it rest there, looking up at Cassian. Neither of them spoke; they only studied each other.

After a minute Cassian asked, “What?”

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Cassian made a sound that could have been agreement or could have been disapproval. Wordlessly he walked around the other side of the bed and climbed in. Vanden felt him lift the covers, and the mattress shifted. Cassian didn’t weigh as much as he looked like he did. This had been strange to realize, that day at the tavern when Vanden had slammed him up against a wall and told him that he didn’t care about being his friend.

He studied the floorboards, what little of them he could see from here. After a moment, he felt an arm gently encircle his waist. He resisted the urge to immediately tense, and he managed to mostly get ahold of the feeling again by the time Cassian had very carefully settled with his chest against Vanden’s back. His breath tickled. Vanden shifted, and Cassian obligingly turned his head away.

Vanden could feel where his scars were, patches and slashes on his back where the feeling was duller. He knew Cassian had to feel them, too, though he didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask about them, didn’t ask what they were or why he couldn’t see them. Vanden appreciated that.

He tried to relax. He’d relaxed like this before, with someone else wrapped around him in bed. He’d felt good, even. Warm. Safe. But he didn’t feel like that now. He was hot, not warm, and he was certainly not safe. He wasn’t sure what is was about Cassian that made him feel not safe. If someone had gotten Vanden at swordpoint and demanded to know what it was about Cassian that he liked, he would have no answer for them. What _did_ he like about Cassian? He was handsome, sure, but Astra was handsome, and Vanden didn’t think he would ever do any of this with Astra. His voice? That purr he got when… well, a lot of different times. Some time ago, he would use that purr when he was saying something he knew would make Vanden want to punch him. And he’d also used that purr when he was pulling Vanden down on top of him. There were complicated feelings, there.

The magic. That was a lot of the problem. Not the tilt of his head, not the knowing smile on his face, or the centuries of knowledge behind those eyes. Everything about Cassian was just so inextricably tied to magic. And magic was… magic was…

With no warning, Cassian slid his arm away and rolled over onto his back with a sigh. Vanden blinked in the sudden chill and realized that he’d been tensing up again.

“You know,” Cassian drawled from behind him, “you could have just asked me to let go of you.”

Vanden’s tone went acid. “You could have asked if you could touch me.” He immediately felt bad, wished he could take it back, wished he didn’t instinctively lash out like this, but an apology would have felt sour on his tongue. He was sick of apologies.

There was a long pause. “Forgive me for assuming,” Cassian said in that stupid, sarcastic tone of his. “For some reason, I thought we were well past that.”

Vanden didn’t have a response. He wanted to get up and put his clothes on and leave, but he didn’t want to risk Sariel or Elyse finding him wandering back to his room in the middle of the night. Or—God. Fuck. This _was_ his room. Damn it. He couldn’t even tell Cassian to leave. He didn’t want to deal with the cold silence that would sit between the two of them for the next few days.

This was so exhausting. He wanted to go outside and scream at the night sky. He wanted to get up and leave and not come back. He wanted to go _home._

Instead he buried his face in the pillow again and did his best to go to sleep.

Cassian waited for a while, lying on his back with a hand behind his head and the other resting on his stomach. It had been an hour or two, he thought. Vanden was still curled up on his side, facing away, not snoring but definitely asleep. Cassian could tell because his shoulders had finally relaxed, and he’d settled into the pillow. He sort of wished Vanden wasn’t wearing his signet ring. This would have been a good time to get a closer look at those symbols without causing him stress. Of course, Vanden still didn’t know that Cassian had seen the scars on his back. There had to be some way to tell him. If he could get a better look, maybe draw out a copy of the runes so he could study them, he’d be able to get a better idea of what they were for. Of why someone would do something like that to him.

But he couldn’t see any of the scarring now, so he’d spent the last hour or so counting the freckles on Vanden’s back and marveling at how someone who commanded a room could become so small so quickly.

Frustrating. He’d gotten that one right on the first try. Vanden was frustrating. Possibly the most frustrating person Cassian had ever met, and coming from a tailor who had worked for new money, that was saying something. His mood could flip like a coin, and Cassian was getting tired of this little thing they had going.

But at the same time, he couldn’t seem to satisfy this… _fascination_ with the prince. At every turn, he seemed to prove he was not the person Cassian had thought he would be. After two hundred years, Cassian had figured he’d met every type of person there was: Quiet, wise ones, like Sariel. Stubbornly kind and optimistic ones like Boblem and Astra. Earnest people like Elyse. Snotty nobles. Quick-witted rogues. Cloying women and know-it-all men and people who were thoughtful and people who were sad and people who were tired. And Vanden.

Vanden du whatever the rest of his name was. A prince with a mask. A spellcaster who hated magic. A commodore afraid of the water. A good swordsman, and a damn good leader. And worse, a truly good man. Good men were few and far between. Cassian would not have counted himself among them. Vanden was just so full of _contradictions._ Normally Cassian stayed out of other people’s business, but he was so, so curious about how this man came to be. Once he knew that, maybe… well, he didn’t know. Maybe he’d be able to truly decide whether Vanden was worth his time. And whether he was worth Vanden’s, what little he had of it.

In the meantime, though, it was getting cold. He got out of bed and put the rest of his clothes on so he could go find somewhere to meditate. Vanden shivered and clutched his pillow, his face creasing, though he didn’t rouse. Cassian studied him for a moment. Then he padded over and pulled the covers up over his shoulder, careful not to touch him. “Not that you deserve it,” he muttered.

Vanden’s expression eased. He mumbled something that might have been, “Thank you,” and then he turned his face deeper into his pillow and sighed.

Cassian just stood and looked at him for a minute, trying to decide what he was feeling. In the end he couldn’t find a word for it. So he just put the feeling aside and left, closing the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at [SeveralSmallHedgehogs](https://severalsmallhedgehogs.tumblr.com/)


End file.
